


Hideaway

by briony8969



Category: Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency (TV 2016)
Genre: First Kiss, Fluff, Humor, Love Confessions, M/M, One Shot
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-12-08
Updated: 2017-12-08
Packaged: 2019-02-12 00:52:49
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,733
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12947769
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/briony8969/pseuds/briony8969
Summary: Set immediately after Season 2 Episode 6: Girl Talk.Dirk and Todd are flung into Wendimoor and into yet another life or death situation. Dirk finally tells Todd why he's been so stressed out lately.





	Hideaway

Todd very nearly reached for Dirk’s hand as the hideaway bed flung the two of them, backwards and upside down, into another universe. The first sensation of inter-dimensional travel was that of slamming face first into a wall, because they did. Right away though, the wall melted into nothingness and they dropped from some height into a heavily wooded forest. Todd scrambled to his feet, sick and utterly disoriented, feeling like he’d just stepped off one of of those whirly-gig rides at a fair and then got hit in the face with a baseball bat.

Dirk just lay in the shrubbery like some kind of melodramatic slug. Todd would have gone over to worry over him except every few seconds he proved he was alive by audibly groaning.

Todd tried to take in their surroundings. It was daytime, but the forest was so lush and full that the sunlight only made it through in patches. Hours of watching Planet Earth with Amanda allowed Todd to judge that it was a temperate forest, like one might find in North America. As if to contradict his assumption, a comically large butterfly fluttered past, wings glowing neon green and hot pink. Colors a child might choose from a crayon box. As the butterfly fluttered upwards, Todd noticed the absolutely horrifying daytime moon, complete with a human face, hanging in the sky.

“We did it! Dirk!” He shouted “We’re in Wendimoor!”

“Great.” Dirk said in a flat tone, not moving from his prone position in the shrubbery. “Let’s go get murdered by magical things.”

Todd’s expression fell. He turned around.

“Look, I don’t know what is up with you, but you have got to get it together. We’re in Wendimoor! Amanda’s in Wendimoor! All we have to do is find her, solve the case, stop that horrifying blonde woman who killed people with triangles, and go home.”

Dirk paused from staring dramatically at the sky and turned his attention to Todd. 

“Priest is there. The boy’s dead. Farah is dead. The case is finished. I wrecked it. We’re just going to have to build a hut in the forest and scavenge for food until we die of scurvy or malnutrition.”

Todd rolled his eyes and stood up. He was about to snip at Dirk about how he didn’t want to have to give him a pep-talk every thirty seconds for the rest of the foreseeable future, but a noise in the forest made him pause. 

“What was that?” Dirk said, snapping up.

“Dude, chill out, it was probably a squirrel or something.” Todd tried to reassure him.

As he said so, he noticed that about thirty yards deeper into the forest a line of tall, threatening men wearing perfectly cubical knight helmets and wielding gargantuan pairs of scissors were marching towards them. They looked absurd, but also very much like bad news. Dirk saw them as well.

“RUN, TODD!” He yelled, jumping to his feet and grabbing Todd’s arm. Todd tried to protest but Dirk was already dragging him along. The noise of their clumsy retreat drew the attention of two of the mage’s knights, who signaled at their comrades to follow.

Todd and Dirk, with the combined athleticism of an indie rock guitarist who had only recently quit smoking and a very much not psychic detective, ran as quickly as one might imagine. However, as they weren’t weighed down by armor, they were able to overcome their lack of coordination and put considerable distance between themselves and the knights. 

Once they were out of visible range, Dirk shook Todd’s arm to get his attention. He gestured to one of the large, heavily branched trees, and started to climb it. Todd followed. He was almost high enough to be hidden from view when he found that, whatever he did, he couldn’t reach the next branch. He wasn’t as tall as Dirk and his fingertips just couldn’t get a good grip.

The sound of the knights approaching in the forest was getting louder, and Todd started to swing and grasp more desperately for the branch. Dirk reached down and grabbed Todd’s forearm, and with immense effort from them both pulled him up into the same branch. The two men clung to one another, trying to minimize the sound of their wheezing breaths, as more and more of the box head knights appeared below them. 

For about 20 minutes Dirk and Todd sat frozen, clinging to their tree branch and one another, as the number of knights running around and searching the area grew fewer and fewer and eventually tapered off completely. By the time they allowed themselves to relax a little bit, every muscle in Todd’s body was shouting at him. He hadn’t used his upper body strength for anything more strenuous than carrying his and Farah’s bags for like, a year. He groaned as he tried to find a comfortable position on the branch. There was none. 

Dirk was basically pulling his hair out.

“I think we’re good now.” Todd whispered.

“Oh DO YOU!?” Dirk asked, looking frenzied. “We’re good, are we? We didn’t just nearly get cut in half by a bunch of Burger King knights with giant scissors?”

Todd had had enough.

“Dirk!” He spoke with the quiet intensity of a mother in a grocery store telling her toddler not to touch those candy bars. “What the fuck is wrong with you? What happened? You used to run into situations like this all the time! You used to drag me along and nearly get us killed! And you always knew it would be all right because everything’s connected, right? What happened?” 

Dirk’s expression melted from freaked out panic into something more despairing.

“Todd, I lied. I lied to you. I didn’t know you were going to be all right! To be honest, Todd, people around me are rarely, if ever, all right. In fact, as you may have noticed, there is a very high percentage of the time that the people around me end up dead. And it’s my fault.”

“It’s not your fault.” 

“It IS my fault. I blunder around the universe like a bloody idiot and I ‘follow my hunches’ and I always end up all right but the people I come in contact with do not. And it never used to matter because I’m so awful that nobody could ever stand to be with me for longer than an hour, but now YOU exist, Todd, and if you end up… cut in half, or decapitated by a hexagon, or something, I just…” To Todd’s shock Dirk’s eyes seemed to fill with tears. “I just couldn’t take it.” 

“You’re not awful.” Todd said. The trail of low self-esteem that seemed to be following Dirk since his re-entry into Blackwing worried him. “I signed up for this…” 

“No!” Dirk almost yelled in frustration. “You aren’t getting it! URGH! Why am I so bad at this?” 

Dirk grabbed the front of Todd’s shirt, yanked him forwards on the branch and kissed him. They nearly lost their balance, and Todd had pull back abruptly to steady himself again, eyes wide with shock.

Dirk, hair messed up, held tightly to the tree branch and stared down at the forest floor. His expression was that of a child who was trying very hard not to cry but not doing a very good job.

“I… can’t lose you.” Dirk said, matter of factly.

“Dirk…” Todd touched his lips, stunned. 

Dirk continued to avoid looking at Todd, which was difficult to do considering that they were inches away from one another in a tree. 

“You could have said something when we were under the love spell.” Todd said.

“Farah was there!” Dirk said. “You were all cuddly with each other!”

“Is that why you got all sulky and stole that girl’s coat?” 

“I…” Dirk’s tone changed to haughty contempt. “I don’t remember anything that happened that night.” 

“Well you just contradicted that… ” Todd sighed. He looked at Dirk, covered in grime and wearing an expression of utter misery. Not for the first time, Todd felt an overwhelming emotion of… friendship? Fondness? He’d been calling it friendship, but Farah in particular had noticed that it had gone somewhat further than that. Todd hadn’t been able to stand the thought of Dirk trapped in Blackwing, alone and abandoned. He kept thinking of his expression at the hospital, before he saw Todd had come to pick him up. The fact that Dirk Gently had never had anyone care enough about him to pick him up from the hospital made Todd’s chest tighten. Without thinking, he grabbed Dirk’s hand. 

Dirk stared at the hand, and then narrowed his eyes at Todd, exuding caution.

“It’s gonna be ok, Dirk.” Todd said.

“You don’t… you can’t possibly know that.” Dirk protested, logically.

Todd pulled Dirk closer and held his hand a little more firmly. Dirk was breathing heavily enough that Todd could see his shoulders rise and fall, and he let out a little soft gasp as Todd closed the last of the distance between them.

“You’re a good detective, Dirk.” Todd said, closing his eyes and kissing Dirk gently on the mouth. “We’re going to be ok.” 

Dirk wasted no time kissing him back, opening his mouth a little bit and leaning into it. 

“Dirk and Todd… sitting in a tree… K.I.S.S.I.N.G…” A female sing-song voice floated up through the branches.

“Amanda!?” Todd gasped, pulling back from the kiss, a little disoriented, trying to shift his position so that he could see.

“First comes love…”

“AMANDA!” Dirk shouted.

“Then comes marriage…”

In his struggle to get a look at who was harassing them from the forest floor, Todd completely lost his grip, and with a frightened yelp fell off the branch. A number of smaller branches slowed his fall so by the time he hit the ground he was pretty beat up, but nothing broken.

Dirk fell shortly afterwards, landing inches away from Todd’s face. Whether he had fallen or dove after him was unclear. 

Amanda, dressed in full goth punk renaissance fair witch glory, stared over the two men, writhing in pain on the forest floor for the second time that day, with little sympathy.

“Amanda?” Todd repeated, when his eyes had stopped watering enough to take her in.

“Hi, jerk.” She said. “We’ve got work to do.”

**Author's Note:**

> Yeah I know it looks like I'm setting this up to turn into something longer, but I'm not, this is all I got in me. Just wanted to write a little fluff drabble where they kiss, that's all. Thanks for reading!


End file.
